Arqiva, the communications infrastructure and media services company, has agreed terms with the Board of Spectrum Interactive, a leading UK based Wi-Fi operator, for an offer to acquire 100 per cent of the shares for total cash consideration of £23.4 million. The deal will enable Arqiva to accelerate its wholesale mobile data business by acquiring […]
Sony has confirmed the purchase cloud gaming company Gaikai for $380 million. Gaikai is a cloud-based game service which allows users to play high-end PC titles by streaming the content via a broadband connection. Consumers never need to download the games, and don’t need advanced PCs to play because the content is running across the […]
Rupert Murdoch has vowed not to make a new bid for BSkyB after the division of News Corp, saying he would focus his media empire on the US because “the English” had made him unwilling to invest any further in the UK. The News Corp chairman’s outburst came in an American television interview with Bloomberg […]
Telecom Italia has received 15 preliminary expressions of interest for its Telecom Italia Media unit. According to Italian daily “Il Sole 24 Ore”, 60 per cent are foreign groups and investors. Among names being mentioned are Sky Italia, Al Jazeera, Discovery Channel, as well as Italian private equity fund Clessidra. Meanwhile, Italian multimedia group L’Espresso […]
A board meeting today (Wednesday) will decide whether to split News’ entertainment and publishing businesses into two separately listed companies. News Corp has retained Goldman Sachs to handle the split process, according to American reports. The three editors of Murdoch’s British titles – Dominic Mohan of the Sun, James Harding of the Times and John […]
Liberty Global has announced that its subsidiary, LGI Broadband Operations, has entered into an agreement, together with investment funds affiliated with Searchlight to acquire 100 per cent of the parent of San Juan Cable, OneLink Communications. OneLink will be merged with LGI’s existing operation, Liberty Cablevision of Puerto Rico LLC, to form the largest cable […]
Canada’s MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates (MDA), best known perhaps for the space technology CanadArm retrieval crane used on the Space Shuttle, is to buy satellite builder Space Systems/Loral (SS/L). MDA will pay over $774 million in cash, plus at least $135 million in other considerations. The payments will go to SS/L’s parent company Loral Space […]
News Corporation is pondering a split into two companies, separating its publishing arm from the far larger entertainment division, thereby removing a drag on the stock price and the reputational taint from the criminal behaviour at its UK newspapers. The report first appeared in the WSJ, a News Corp paper, and hasn’t been denied. The […]
Microsoft has bought the four-year-old business social network Yammer for $1.2 billion. The purchase of Yammer, dubbed “Facebook for the workplace”, is the latest instalment in Microsoft’s bid to protect its dominant Office products from a challenge by Google. The service claims to have more than 5 million corporate users at groups including Ford, Shell, […]
Guardian Media Group has sold its radio business, which includes the Real Radio and Smooth Radio networks, to Global Radio for an estimated price of £50 million. GMG, which has built up the UK’s third-largest radio group over the past 13 years, signed the deal with Global Radio after receiving a number of offers for […]